Annual Symposium: Polyphonic Culture: Early Music on the 21st-Century Horizon

This symposium, co-sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the School of Music, will explore issues in the contemporary scholarship on, and performance of, historical choral music. Participants are traveling from England,  Massachusetts, Oregon, Texas, and Indiana as well as Columbus Ohio to present their current thinking on pre-baroque 16th-century polyphony, Latin-American and indigenous polyphonic traditions of the early colonial era, the roots of African American choral style, and cutting-edge issues in the study and performance of early choral music today. 

Activities will include a concert of William Byrd's music by Fior Angelico; an exhibit of early musical sources from the Thompson Library collections; and a 'master-class' rehearsal of the Men's Glee Club with Jameson Marvin.

This event is free and open to the public. 

Schedule

(for lecture abstracts, please scroll down to the "Bios" section)

Thursday November 16

8:00–9:30 pm: Fior Angelico presents a free concert of the music of William Byrd. Fior Angelico is a Columbus-based chamber chorus dedicated to the performance of early music. The ensemble specializes in music of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Location: Timashev N150, Recital Hall. 

Friday November 17 (in Thompson 150 except where noted)

8:30–9:00 am: Coffee  

9:00–9:15 am: Introductions, featuring Chris Highley, director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Michael Ibrahim, Director of the School of Music; and Graeme Boone, Professor of Musicology and organizer of the symposium.

9:15–11:30 — Session 1:  Scholarly Horizons

9:15–10:00 am: Kerry McCarthy, independent scholar and musician. “Singing in Tudor England: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”

10:00–10:45 am: Matthew Bester, director, Fior Angelico. “Performative Practice and Practical Performance: Singing Byrd in the 21st Century.” 

10:45–11:30 am: Don Greig, independent scholar and professional singer. “Nary a Backward Glance:  Tradition, Innovation, and the English Choral Sound.” 

11:30 am–12:00 pm: Eric Johnson, OSU libraries:  manuscript/print exhibit in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library Reading Room (105 Thompson Library). “An Exhibit of Early Musical Sources from the Library Collections."

12:00–1:30 pm: Lunch break

12:45–1:15 pm: Lunchtime concert by Sean Ferguson, early-music multi-instrumentalist. “A Concert of Fantasias and Choral Intabulations for Vihuela.”

1:30–3:00 — Session 2:  Cultural Horizons

1:30–2:15 pm: Bernardo Illari, Associate Professor of Music History, University of North Texas. “Latin America: Local-born Polyphonies?” 

2:15–3:00 pm: Raymond Wise, Professor of Practice and Director of the African American Choral Ensemble, Indiana University. “Seeking the Roots of the Gospel Choral Tradition in America.”

3:00–3:45 — Session 3:  Performance Horizons

3:00–3:45 pm: A conversation between Jameson Marvin, Director Emeritus of Choral Activities, Harvard University and Robert Ward, Associate Professor and Director of Choral Studies, The Ohio State University. “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?  Choral Polyphony Today."

4:15–5:05 pm: Rehearsal of the Men’s Glee Club with Jameson Marvin (Timashev N160)

5:15–6:00 pm: Reception (Timashev N160)

Saturday, November 18

9:00–11:00 am: Informal round table discussion (Thompson 150)

Bios & Abstracts (in the order in which they appear in the schedule, above)

Kerry McCarthy:  “Singing in Tudor England: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?”

Abstract:  Around 1530, at the high-water mark of traditional musical and devotional practice before the Reformation, approximately one in every fifty literate people in England was employed as a church singer of some sort. Unlike other ecclesiastical arts such as painting, sculpture, or indeed musical composition, the performance of polyphonic music was an art that could only be practiced in groups. Singing polyphony or complex plainchant in public ceremonies was also an inherently rather risky activity, and many contemporary accounts describe things going awry in various ways. Musicians lose their way during nighttime services because of insufficient lighting; they antagonize colleagues by blocking their view of the music; they engage in (and lose) sight-singing contests; “plainsong faileth” and choir members are “negligent and wild”; a cathedral singer collects medicinal recipes to ease “roughness of the pipes”; one unfortunate performer loses his voice during a live performance in front of the Queen, but saves the day by breaking the fourth wall. Some documents (such as the relevant section of the early-Tudor Leconfield Proverbs) are almost entirely preoccupied with what can go wrong. The sixteenth century in England is justly celebrated as a golden age of ensemble singing, but we can also learn a lot from the failures, mistakes, and vulnerabilities of those generations of singers.

Bio:  Kerry McCarthy is a musician and author known for her work on the English Renaissance. Her recent publications include biographies of Thomas Tallis (Oxford University Press; 2021 AMS award for early music book of the year) and William Byrd (Oxford University Press; 2014 ASCAP Slonimsky Award for musical biography of the year.) She is also active as a professional singer, and her current research project is a wide-ranging study of the lives of singers in Tudor England. 

Matthew Bester:  “Performative Practice and Practical Performance: Singing Byrd in the 21st Century.” 

Bio:  Matthew Bester is the director of music at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Columbus. He is the artistic director of Fior Angelico, a Columbus-based early music chorus that he founded in 2006. He sings regularly with the all-professional Lancaster Chorale, for which he also serves as associate conductor. He is the vice president of the Board of Trustees of The Friends of Early Music in Columbus, which oversees the Early Music in Columbus concert series. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in musicology from The Ohio State University as well as a graduate certificate as a specialist in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from Ohio State’s Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude in music from Harvard University. In 2023, he was visiting assistant professor in music at Denison University, where he directed the choirs and taught courses in music history. Over the years, he also has taught numerous graduate and undergraduate courses as an adjunct faculty member at The Ohio State University. 

Don Greig:  “Nary a Backward Glance:  Tradition, Innovation, and the English Choral Sound” 

Abstract:  During the latter part of the twentieth century, the performance of medieval and renaissance choral music, particularly in the English-speaking world, was dominated by British ensembles. Gothic Voices made musicologists rethink medieval secular song, while groups like The Tallis Scholars and The Sixteen brought sacred renaissance polyphony decisively onto the concert stage. Coinciding with the arrival of the Compact Disc and underpinned by assumptions of an unbroken English choral tradition going back many centuries, these groups offered what seemed a convincing image of the past, an innovative sense of the present, and a compelling vision for the future. But such performances were informed by specific national cultural and class values which now appear increasingly outdated. Can we re-imagine the dominant 20th-century traditions of early music for a new era, and if so, how might it be done? 

Bio:  Donald Greig is an independent scholar and a professional singer with a specialization in early music. He was a co-founder of and singer with The Orlando Consort, a member of The Tallis Scholars for approximately twenty-five years, and has sung in several English choral institutions and with many British early music groups. He is a former lecturer in film studies and semiology, and received his doctorate in music from the University of Nottingham where he is an honorary research fellow. His novel, Time Will Tell, was published in 2012, and his first academic book, Baroque Music and Cinema for Cambridge University Press came out in 2021. He is currently a full time singer with Canterbury Cathedral choir and is writing a book on the production, reception and musical remediations of La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928). 

Eric Johnson:   “An Exhibit of Early Musical Sources from the Library Collections”

Abstract:  This exhibit illustrates the breadth and depth of University Library sources in early music, together with the various ways in which their collection is currently being developed

Bio:  Dr. Eric J. Johnson is professor and curator of Thompson Special Collections at The Ohio State University Libraries, where he oversees the collection development, teaching and outreach activities of the department. In addition, he is lead curator of the Rare Books & Manuscripts Library and curator of the Herman J. Albrecht Library of Historical Architecture. Johnson teaches widely across the university’s interdisciplinary humanities curriculum, with particular emphasis on manuscript studies and book history (ancient to modern).  He holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York (UK), as well as a M.L.I.S. from Rutgers University. His research interests extend widely across the fields of medieval and Renaissance studies, codicology and bibliography, book history, the pedagogical uses of primary source materials in K-12 and university classrooms and the digital humanities. He is particularly interested in “fragmentology,” an emerging subfield of manuscript studies invested in the reconstruction of medieval books and the recovery of their dispersed leaves and lost (or obscured) histories.

Sean Ferguson:  “A Concert of Fantasias and Choral Intabulations for Vihuela”

Abstract:  In this informal concert, Mr. Ferguson will illustrate some of the riches of 16th-century vihuela music, sampling in particular its broad repertory of transcriptions from contemporary polyphonic choral music.

Bio:  Sean Ferguson holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music history from The Ohio State University and a Master of Library Science degree from Kent State University. In Philadelphia, he studied guitar at the University of the Arts and was a winner of the WFLN Radio Instrumentalists Competition. He has performed extensively on guitar and lute as a soloist, accompanist, chamber musician and orchestra member, including productions for Opera Columbus, Columbus Dance Theatre, The Ohio State University, Otterbein University and Ohio Wesleyan University. He has been performing in the Columbus-based ensemble The Early Interval since 2009. As a librarian, he has worked at OCLC Online Computer Library Center, and since 2004 has been a staff member at The Ohio State University Music and Dance Library. He is president of the Columbus Guitar Society.   

Bernardo Illari:  “Latin America: Local-born Polyphonies?” 

Abstract:  Latin America is more complex than one may think. In order to gain a firm and fair understanding of the music, scholars and performers alike need to dive into that complexity. This paper deals with diverse ideas of "the native" in the subcontinent through three- and four-part counterpoint (as presented by Mateo de Aranda and Vicente Lusitano), which I take as a measuring stick to examine Latin American polyphonies. Nunnery music from Córdoba (Argentina) ca. 1620 seems normative, in that exemplifies, by means of local products, the overseas transfer of contrapuntal technology. Nahuatl hymns from Cacalomacan (State of Mexico) attributed to Hernando Franco (not at all contrapuntal) are outliers, possibly created by indigenous musicians. Finally, the arch-famous Quechua song Hanaq pachap Kussikuynin (composed ca. 1620 in Peru) is a one-of-a-kind, ambivalent cultural object that it both contributes to an urban, post-contrapuntal development, and communicates with indigenous populations in the countryside. 

Bio:  Bernardo Illari is an Argentine-Italian musicologist and composer specializing in Latin American music before 1830, and Argentine national music of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.  He published Doménico Zipoli: para una genealogía de la música “clásica” latinoamericana (2011), the facsimile of Juan Pedro Esnaola’s Cuaderno de música (1844) (2009) and the edited volume Música barroca del Chiquitos jesuítico (1998), and about 30 articles on diverse topics pertaining to Latin American music.  He earned a career recognition award from the Konex Foundation (2009), the Otto Mayer-Serra Award (2013), the Premio de Musicología “Casa de las Américas” (2003), and the Samuel Claro Award in Latin American Musicology (2000).  He has taught at the University of North Texas since 2001.  

Raymond Wise:   “Seeking the Roots of the Gospel Choral Tradition in America”

Bio:  Reverend Raymond Wise, professor of music at Indiana University and associate director of its African Arts Institute, is a native of Baltimore who has been singing gospel music since the age of three.  He pursued his studies at Denison University, the Institute for European Studies in Vienna, Austria and San Francisco State University, ultimately earning his master's and doctoral degrees at The Ohio State University with a dissertation on the historical development of gospel music.  He has served for over 40 years as a minister, conductor and music director for numerous organizations in styles ranging from popular music to gospel to opera, and as a singer in diverse productions of opera, orchestral and chamber music.

8.  Jameson Marvin, with Robert Ward:  “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?  Choral Polyphony Today” 

Abstract:  The question refers not only to the neglect of singing Renaissance music but also the neglect of the magnificent polyphony of the 17th through the 21st centuries. Performing polyphony seems rarely considered today.  To our traditional multi-voiced, multi-sized choirs directed conductors in churches, schools, communities, and colleges, I ask, how can we bring to life the profoundly enriching panoply of styles of the 15th through the early 17th centuries? How can we project the expressive power and beauty of Renaissance music so that it offers a wellspring of emotions tour singers and audiences? 

Bio:  Jameson Marvin retired after 32 years as Director of Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer of Music at Harvard University (1978-2010). Under his direction the choral program at Harvard grew to include six choirs and achieve national prominence. He conducted the Harvard Glee Club, Radcliffe Choral Society and the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, and under his conductorship these ensembles appeared at seven national and ten divisional conventions of the American Choral Directors Association. His ensembles are considered to be among the premier collegiate choruses in America.

Prior to coming to Harvard, Dr. Marvin was the director of choral music at Vassar College and conductor of the Cappella Festiva Chamber Choir and Orchestra for nine years. He has conducted over 80 symphonic-choral works and has served on the national committee for the selection of conducting candidates for the Fulbright Fellowships. His mastery of the choral art is reflected by his distinguished national reputation as a conductor, teacher, author, scholar, editor and arranger. The Boston Globe calls Marvin “a choral conductor of consummate mastery.”

Dr. Marvin’s articles on choral music, editions of Renaissance works for mixed, women’s, and men’s choruses and arrangements of numerous folk songs appear in some 70 publications. Raised in Glendale, California, he received his B.A. degree in music theory, history and composition from the University of California Santa Barbara, an M.A. degree in choral conducting and early music performance from Stanford University and a D.M.A. in choral music from the University of Illinois.

Bio:  Robert J. Ward is director of choral studies at The Ohio State University, where he conducts the Men’s Glee Club and Chorale. Prior to his appointment at Ohio State, Ward was a member of the music faculty at Oklahoma State University for sixteen years. He has been honored with invitations to present concerts and lectures for National ACDA, National Collegiate Choral Organization. North Central Division ACDA, Central Division ACDA, International Kodály Educators, Organization of American Kodály Educators, Texas Music Educators Association and Texas Choral Directors Association, as well as Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Mississippi, Ohio, Utah, Arkansas, Louisiana and West Virginia Choral Directors Associations. He is currently the editor of a choral series published by Santa Barbara Music Publishers.

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